La voz pasiva – Passive

A happening can be represented from two different perspectives: from the perspective of “active” or from the perspective of the happening itself or the action (“passive”):

El instituto organizó una fiesta. (Aktiv)

Una fiesta fue organizada por el instituto. (Passiv)

The passive is formed with an auxiliary verb (ser, estar) and a past participle. The auxiliary verb is conjugated and the participle depends on the genus and the number of the subject:

„La Fiesta del Chivo“ fue escrito por Vargas Llosa.

La comida está preparada

Las latas han sido colocadas en la estantería.

The passive with ser is called processual passive, with estar statal passive.

Processual passive

The processual passive is used to put an action in the center.

If you convert an active sentence into a passive sentence, the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence. Only transitive verbs have a direct object in the active clause, which is why only with transitive verbs can the passive be formed. If it is to be mentioned by whom an action is carried out, then the subject of the active sentence is appended with por (from):

Aktive:

El gobierno (Subject) aproba una nueva ley (Object).

Passive:

Una nueva ley (Subject) es aprobada por el gobierno.

The passive can stand in all times, for example:

Una nueva ley es aprobada por el gobierno (Present)

Una nueva ley ha sido aprobada por el gobierno (Perfect)

Una nueva ley fue aprobada por el gobierno (Indefinido)

Una nueva ley será aprobada por el gobierno (Future)

Statal Passive

In contrast to the processual passive, the focus here is not on the action itself, but on the event of an action:

La cena ya está preparada y los niños están comiendo.

Passive replacement

Since the passive in Spanish occurs almost exclusively in written language, there are sentence structures that are used instead of the passive.

In a paragraph, one can put the direct object at the center by moving it to the beginning of the sentence and doubling it by an accusative pronoun in front of the verb:

La ley la aprobó el gobierno.

In Spanish, passive sentences are often replaced by a construction with the reflexive pronoun se. The verb depends on the number of the subject: